Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

help.mistral.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 262 posts

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#71

Post by Barbing »

throwaway89201 wrote: post #17
teekert wrote: post #2

Context: After careful research our organization preferred a European partner with good central privacy controls. We landed on Mistral, after being disappointed that the Pro tier was opt-in to training on prompts by default we switched up to the Team tier which provides an organization dashboard with some relevant settings. As we did that Mistral changed these options and the Team tier was now also opt-in by default…

> and at the same time seemed to have lost the ability to centrally disable training on prompts for your entire organization There is a toggle on https://admin.mistral.ai that allows you to disable training for both Vibe and Console/API for your entire organisation. And I'm not on the enterprise plan. I've disabled training the first time I created an account, and it has remained that way. You story is also very conf…

My native-US-English speaker read:

“disappointed that the Pro tier was opted-in to training on prompts by default” [and required manually opting out]

“the Team tier was now also opted-in by default” [and required manually opting out]

In context of each sentence and the larger comment, read smoothly here.

Also - have seen more than one lively discussion on these phrases, since defaults can stick 95% of the time and Big Tech has done their best to be abusive about what they automatically enable for users by default for some time.

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#72

Post by rdm_blackhole »

danelski wrote: post #34

Most commenters here clutching their pearls as if Claude and Gemini Pro didn't do it already. In the latter you (as a paying customer) can't even store the chat history unless you agree to their 'improvement of services'. Do you have all your accounts paid for by the enterprise or you never check the settings?

> Most commenters here clutching their pearls as if Claude and Gemini Pro didn't do it already.

That's not the point though. The problem is that in the minds of lots of people including here on HN or otherwise, a service based in the EU is de-facto "more" respectful of digital privacy.

You can read the comments on threads related to the EU tech where you will find people defending to the very end that privacy is better in the EU and that EU providers will never stoop as low as their US counterparts.

As always the truth is a lot murkier than that.

Yes, some services based in the EU are better in terms of privacy but it's not a given for all of them and it depends entirely on the service. Unfortunately such a nuanced take is not wildly popular in the tech world in this day and age where every US company is labelled as an evil data hungry entity and EU companies are portrayed as saints in this regard.

That's where the first problem lies.

The second problem is that for years now, people have been singing the praises of Mistral as a privacy friendly alternative the the US juggernauts because Mistral's headquarters is located in the EU and unfortunately today it seems some people are waking up to the fact that Mistral is doing the same thing than its US counterparts and they are disappointed which is understandable.

Who is to blame for this dichotomy? Is it Mistral who leaned too much on this marketing angle (the European Chatgpt without the invasive tracking/ better privacy settings) or is it the users who failed to realize that EU or not, Mistral wasn't going to pass on the opportunity to improve its models this way?

My hunch is that it's both.

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#73

Post by locknitpicker »

kccqzy wrote: post #21
lukan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For contrast: Claude disables training on prompts for organizations starting from the 18 euro tier " In theory also for individuals? At least I have that toggle to deactivate that. But how would I ever know if they actually respect that?

If you don’t trust the company to keep their promise, don’t use their products.

> If you don’t trust the company to keep their promise, don’t use their products.

Your comment is perplexing. No company on earth meets your requirement. What are you expected to do? Move to a hut in the woods?

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#74

Post by teekert »

throwaway89201 wrote: post #69
teekert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have that toggle (but could indeed have sworn I saw it earlier). Sorry, I have always thought that "opting in" is, "opting for the presented option" and opting out is "opting out of it", so opting out [of sharing prompts for training] is choosing to not share, but apparently I was wrong my whole life. I'm not a native speaker, and I think most people here (in my country) would interpret this the way I do? Wei…

> I don't have that toggle (but could indeed have sworn I saw it earlier). You don't see "Allow the use of your interactions with Vibe to train Mistral’s AI models" at https://admin.mistral.ai/vibe/privacy ? And "Allow the use of your API calls to train Mistral’s AI models" at https://admin.mistral.ai/plateforme/privacy ?

The toggles I see

at https://admin.mistral.ai/vibe/privacy:

Allow public sharing of chats content

Allow user feedback on model responses

Chat Retention Policy

At https://admin.mistral.ai/plateforme/privacy I see

Allow the use of your API calls to train Mistral’s AI models.

Enable Labs models

So indeed, no "Allow the use of your interactions with Vibe to train Mistral’s AI models". I only see that setting here: https://chat.mistral.ai/chat?profile_dialog=privacy And I have to ask every user in my org to go and turn it off.

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#75

Post by Exoristos »

teekert wrote: post #2

Context: After careful research our organization preferred a European partner with good central privacy controls. We landed on Mistral, after being disappointed that the Pro tier was opt-in to training on prompts by default we switched up to the Team tier which provides an organization dashboard with some relevant settings. As we did that Mistral changed these options and the Team tier was now also opt-in by default…

> opt-in by default

That's called opt-out.

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#76

Post by teekert »

kieranmaine wrote: post #60
saaaaaam wrote: post #28

This is a hugely misleading editorialised title. The page title is "Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training". Right at the top of the page it says "In certain cases, your input and output data (such as conversations, documents, and other user-provided content) may be included in Mistral’s model training programs. You retain full control over this processing and have the right to opt out of th…

Agreed. I read the title as they would start using my data for training and I couldn't opt-out. After looking at the page and checking my app (I have Pro subscription) it seems like I can opt-out and my initial opt-out when I subscribed was preserved.

When I started my search for an AI "partner" the Mistral TEAM plan had "use my prompts for training" turned off by default, as per their docs in multiple places. I could have sworn I saw a organization switch in my dashboard for this setting org wide, but am not sure.

I start the subscription, users report it is "on" by default, I ask support what's up, they say "sorry, docs should have been updated earlier but they are now". And they give me a lot of credits.

I just want to warn people, the Team sub just changed, docs were update too late, there was very little press about this (in my view) very important change. Actually, it is so important that I would not advice Mistral to our management if they'd use our prompts for training, so I take a TEAM sub so this is disabled for sure, or I can disable this org wide. But I can't anymore, now I have to ask each user/seat to disable sharing, and hope they do, I have no way to check. Way to inspire confidence. And their response: "You can still do this with the Enterprise subscription".

We flamed Anthropic for their switcheroo with their personal Pro plan a year ago [0], now Mistral does it with their business focused Team plan, so they deserve some fire imo.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45076274

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#78

Post by kzrdude »

jrave wrote: post #33
KPGv2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are "opting in to sharing your prompts for training", by default in this case. The English term for that is "opt out" not "opt in." To opt is to choose. If something is on by default, you have not opted in. You were forced in, and turning it off means you must opt out . (I.e., choose to be out.) normally I wouldn't care about a mistake like this, except that opt in/out are very important concepts in software de…

as another non-native speaker, i think that while the person you're answering to didn't use the default way of expressing this in the english-speaking world, i did understand what they meant, i think they do know what opting means and i think the reasoning is this: when they say data collection is "opt in" by default they mean that by choosing to use a product, you are opting into your data being collected (at the sa…

As another non-native speaker, I misunderstood what the person meant.

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#79

Post by woah »

villish wrote: post #29
segmondy wrote: post #7

There are so models that beats all of Mistral models, plus you can run many of them locally. Why would anyone run Mistral?

To have at least a choice of using a European trained model. Downloadable weights is not open source. Mistral is able to respond to any regulatory queries about training data and concerns.

Haha, the answer is "european regulation"?

Re: Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

#80

Post by teekert »

kieranmaine wrote: post #51
maxdo wrote: post #8

It’s a spyware, but a sovereign one

How so? I've opted out of using my data for training.

Defaults matter. The expectation for an organization tier plan is not that you have to go and ask each user in your org to please turn off "Allow the use of your interactions with Vibe to train Mistral's AI models" before starting your work.
Post reply on HN